3100, 3200 miles - Aleg to Kiffa

Apart from stopping at many, many police checkpoints and handing out fiche after fiche, the afternoon was quite dull!





We arrived at Kiffa around 7ish, opting for the hotel El Emel where Nelson immediately went into bat over the prices of the rooms (and got us all a good deal). We used the Bank of Cheryl to exchange Euros for Ougiyas as we were saving the last few notes of local currency for a splash of diesel the following morning. Ana cooked a version of penne alla arrabiata and I tried to fix the sticky clutch pedal on the Patrol - while we were eating, the other teams arrived from Nouakchott having repaired their Sierra and driven through the evening.

After dinner we decided to split our group of five cars for the trip to Mali. Three of us (the Portuguese, the Nomad'ers, and ourselves) wanted to take the off-road route across the border, whereas the teams in the Escort and Hyundai were just keen to keep their cars running as far as Bamako! They linked up with some other Group 4 cars and we made plans to leave early the next morning for Mali.